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"VV board OKs $40M bond sale" by: Jessica Shepard

Submitted by Baycity1 on Thu, 06/07/2018 - 8:40am

Van Vleck school trustees unanimously approved May 30 the sale and delivery of $40 million in bond funds to UBS Financial Services, Inc. for projects under construction at the high school campus.
“The sale took place today, so, we’re just asking you to approve it,” said district financial advisor Lewis Wilks with US Capital Advisors.
“Once approved, we expect them to close out on June 27 and you’ll have the funds available then.
“We took competitive bids this time and received six bids that were ranked by true interest costs.”
UBS Financial Services, Inc. won the bid with the lowest true interest cost at 3.097520 percent.
“USB submitted the best bid and we recommended going with them,” added Wilks.
“They were much lower than our estimates made back in November,” added Superintendent John O’Brien.
“One of the reasons we had our sale at this point is because we just had an election in May (primary runoffs May 22). So any bond elections that happened in May, we wanted to get ahead of their sales before they sell their bonds and get the best interest rate available.”
“That’s true, we knew we were really high with our estimates then,” said Wilks.
“But, we were really shocked that it was this low. I think the competitive sale prices really helped. And there’s not a whole lot of supply out there.
“So, people are begging for municipal bonds out there and really want these bonds.
“The banks and financial institutions are bidding strong to try and win those bids. Even though we only see six bidders here, each of these probably has at least 30 to 40 other smaller firms under them,” he added.
The bonds have a nine-year call limit on them, he said.
“That means in nine years we can re-finance these if rates are better at that point,” said Wilks.
There are $38.6 million in bonds left to sell.